Ikan ( The Sembilang).jpg

Aina Kurshiah Binti Mohamed Rashid

Ikan (The Sembilang)

2020

Medium

Mixed Media (Collage, Acrylic, Oil Pastel)

Dimensions

152.4 x 91.44 cm

Department

Drawing and Painting

＄n.s.

 

This piece serves both humorous narration about Sungai Sembilang folklore and a tribute to my father.

My dad loves fishing since he was a child. Growing up as a kampung boy, he loved everything regarding farming, fishing and being a classic adventurous kid. He took me to fishing once when I was around 13 to 14 years old. Luckily it was a Sembilang season. Catching the hybrid fish has always been something I couldn’t forget as it was the time where my father and I bonded the most. I nearly got stung by Sembilang and he told me cheesy stories about the folklore surrounding it: How once a human was cursed to be a Sembilang. Briefly, the folklore of Sungai Sembilang is about a woman named Suri that lived in a village near Jeram area in Selangor, Malaysia. The villagers were forbidden to consume the living from that river as it was mentioned to be magical. Suri didn’t believe it, which led her to break those taboos and consume roughly 9 fishes from the river. She suffered with severe stomach ache after that and went to the shaman but she refused to help. Suri’s body disintegrated by the curse and she was doomed to be the very fish she devoured to live as fish for her eternity. She was called Sembilang, as in Sembilan which is the number 9 in Malay language.

I was quite a child at that time, understandably stunted by the story and traumatized ever since. In Malay culture, such stories were around to teach children to behave well and that is what makes it more interesting. Its the same concept as "if you don’t behave well, Santa wont give you presents this year". There is something innocent about it that I found myself looking back at it fondly. I wanted to express my view when I was a child towards such horrifying creature. That’s why I created the Sembilang as this green abstract figure in ominous setting. Its proven that a child is terrified with something bigger than them, like a child scared of the Boogeyman, Crooked Man etc. Threat to them can be seen vast, as exaggerated as they can to show how naive a child’s perspective and understanding are.

This is also comes down to why I dedicated this piece to my father. The huge composition can also be served as a prideful moment to fisherman, to be able to carry a huge fish into the boat. According to my father, it’s more satisfying to catch a fish and toss it back into the water, rather than killing them. From there, I respect this satisfaction of his: it was rather the superiority feeling he got from capturing it and not devouring it which can be a perfect juxtaposition to the folklore.

The process overall involved collage and mixture between dry (Oil Pastel) and wet mediums (Acrylic). I used Masking Tape and glue to cover up my fish figure to get that paper-like texture to give illusions of its skin popping thru the pigments. After that, I used Acrylic paint to cover up the whole composition in base colours before I used Oil Pastel for shadings and detailing.